Atmel and Arduino: Inspiring DIY Makers

Atmel MCU Applications Manager Bob Martin recently went on camera to discuss Atmel’s unique relationship with Arduino, Maker Faire and the DIY Maker Movement.

As Martin points out, Atmel’s 8- and 32-bit microcontrollers have been the MCUs of choice for Arduino since the boards first hit the streets for DIY Makers way back in 2005. More specifically, he attributes the success of Arduino to its easy-to-use, free cross-platform toolchain and its simple do-it-yourself packages with Atmel MCUs.

“These factors helped initially steer the Arduino team to choose our AVR microcontrollers – and today, both our AVR and ARM-based MCUs,” Martin explained.

The Atmel MCU Applications Manager also noted that one of the coolest Maker technologies to surface in recent years is 3D printing technology, an industry expected to be worth $3 billion by 2016. To be sure, says Martin, almost every major 3D printer is currently based on Atmel AVR MCUs.

As previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the Maker Movement is growing exponentially by taking advantage of 3D printers, inexpensive microcontrollers, robotics, CAD and the ability to control machines with computers, tablets and smartphones.
According to Larry Magid, a technology journalist who writes for the San Jose Mercury News, we are all Makers to a certain extent, even if some of us don’t know it yet.

“All of us – even Leonardo da Vinci – were late comers as far as the Maker movement is concerned,” he explained. “Our prehistoric ancestors millions of years ago, figured out how to turn stones into tools so that they could make things. Only they didn’t have fairs, books and websites to document the process.”

Similarly, Will.i.am, the technophile founder of The Black Eyed Peas, recently offered a ringing endorsement of the Maker Movement and related culture on Facebook.

“Every young person is going to be inspired to be a maker from now on,” said Will.i.am. “It’s like how everyone used to want to be a musician, an actor, an athlete — but a maker is what people are going to want to be.”

Indeed, as Arduino’s Massimo Banzi once famously noted, “You don’t need anyone’s permission to make something great.”

Chalk Talk with Atmel’s MCU maestro

Connecting your device to the rapidly expanding Internet of Things (IoT) opens up a wide world of potential new capabilities. In this episode of EE Journal’s Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Andreas Eieland (Atmel) about some amazing new devices that can dramatically simplify the task of getting your next design into the IoT party.

As Eieland notes, the first ARM Cortex-M0+ powered lineup from Atmel is the general purpose SAM D20 family – ranging all the way from 32 pin devices with 16KB of embedded Flash to 64 pin 256KB devices.

“We have learnt a lot about microcontrollers (MCUs) since Atmel launched the first 8051 micro in 1995 and the first AVR in 1996,” Eieland explained. “A lot of this know-how is included in the new SAM D20 family: from simple things that make the devices easy to develop with like making the devices pin and code compatible, to more advanced system integration technologies.”

As previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a future world where all types of electronic devices link to each other via the Internet. Today, it’s estimated that there are nearly 10 billion devices in the world connected to the Internet, a figure expected to triple to nearly 30 billion by 2020.

According to lead IDATE analyst Samuel Ropert, the IoT actually aims to go beyond M2M by enabling any object to connect and leverage the Internet (Internet of Objects – IoO) even if it does not contain the electronics required to connect directly to the Internet; it connects to the internet with the use of an intermediate device.

“[Based on] this definition, 15 billion things (machines, connected devices and objects) were connected to the Internet in 2012, up from 4 billion in 2010. In 2020, there will be 80 billion where IoO will represent 85% of the total IoT, ahead of communicating devices with 11% and M2M with only 4%,” Ropert added.

Atmel’s 8-bit AVR is one of the most popular MCUs ever!

EDN has chosen Atmel’s stalwart and versatile AVR as one of the most popular microcontrollers (MCUS) ever!

“Atmel AVRs revolutionized the 8-bit market when it was launched, with single cycle execution, free software tools and large Flash memory options. Since then, Atmel has continued to innovate and gain market share,” writes EDN’s Stephen Evanczuk.

“For the devices that run in the biggest volumes it is never one feature that makes it good as It needs to be successful in many markets to hit the high numbers. Ease of use, high performance, good sales support, high quality levels and on time delivery are essential.”

As previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, Atmel’s current generation of AVR 8- and 32-bit microcontrollers compliment our ARM MCU and microprocessors (MPUs) to deliver a unique combination of performance, power efficiency and design flexibility. Simply put, no other microcontrollers deliver more computing performance with better power efficiency.

Interested in learning more about Atmel’s extensive AVR MCU portfolio? You can check out our detailed AVR 8- and 32-bit device breakdown here.

32-bit AVR MCUs for automotive applications (Part 4)

In the first part of this series, we took a closer look at how Atmel’s AVR low-power 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) help enable the implementation of various product-differentiating features, including advanced control algorithms, voice control and capacitive touch sensing.

We also discussed powering Atmel’s AVR UC3C 32-bit automotive-grade microcontrollers with either a 3.3V or a 5V supply  (generally supporting 5V I/O), talked about Atmel’s Peripheral Event System and explored how Atmel’s low-power 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) are used to help protect IP and bolster system safety.

Today we will take an in-depth look at how Atmel’s AVR low-power 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) help streamline automotive development. As previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, evaluating current-gen microcontroller architecture requires a complete development environment, including an evaluation kit, a software development environment with compiler and debugger, as well as a comprehensive set of application examples, drivers and services.

“[Simply put], Atmel simplifies system development with the AVR Software Framework, which supports a variety of optimized interface drivers peripheral firmware, and application code – including extensive motor control algorithms, capacitive touch drivers, advanced digital signal processing algorithms (i.e., FFTs and filters such as band-pass, high-pass, and low-pass), commonly used audio and image codecs such as MP3, speech recognition engines, display drivers, and FAT12/16/32 file systems, to name a few,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces.

“For automotive systems, the support with LIN and CAN software stacks, as well as with operating systems such as OSEK, and MCAL layers for the Autosar environment is mandatory. Model-based approaches for the development of automotive applications are becoming more and more popular, and these require additional support of design environments such as MATLAB/Simulink. Atmel AVR MCUs also support real-time trace, enabling full system operation visibility. Plus, updates with new features are available every quarter.”

In terms of software, the intuitive GUI-based Atmel AVR Studio is the industry’s most complete development environment for 8- and 32-bit applications, offering full compiler and debugger support for all AVR microcontrollers. Since peripherals are configured using the AVR Software Framework, migration between different AVR devices is truly seamless.

Atmel also supplies a wide range of hardware-based tools for in-system programming, debugging, and evaluation. The AT32UC3C-EK evaluation kit provides access to the extensive capabilities of the UC3C architecture with out-of-the-box simplicity, with the evaluation kit supporting Atmel QTouch capabilities.

“Specific examples of automotive applications with Atmel’s AVR UC3C include car audio, LED backlighting with a dimming function for the indicators, as well as interfaces for different types of sensors and switches to control the window lifter and the mirror positioning,” the Atmel engineering rep continued.

“Perhaps most importantly, a microcontroller such as the UC3C—with peripheral integration and extended processing capacity—allows an entire system architecture to be consolidated onto a single chip.”

Interested in learning more about 32-bit AVR MCUs for automotive applications? Be sure to check out part one, two and three of this series.

High-performance lighting with Atmel’s MSL2021/23/24 LED drivers

Atmel’s MSL2021/23/24 series of solid state lighting (SSL) LED drivers are equipped with an adaptive power control scheme and temperature compensation circuitry – offering the most efficient power management for high color-rendering index (CRI) luminaires.

According to an Atmel engineering rep, the MSL2021/23/24 devices drive one dominant LED string and one color LED string to achieve the target correlated color temperature (CCT), replicating the color spectrum and attaining a high CRI value.

“Competitive LED drivers, by contrast, are more expensive and complex to use, requiring an external microcontroller and firmware to address temperature compensation,” the engineering rep explained.

The above-mentioned Atmel series consists of three devices:

MSL2021 – The first LED driver with integrated temperature compensation for the color LED string.

MSL2023 – Equipped with an I2C serial port and internal pulse-width modulation (PWM) generators.

MSL2024 – Features PWM inputs which are suited for development with Atmel’s general-purpose and communications AVR microcontrollers.

Key functions and features include color control of two-color LED light engines, direct control of offline AC/DC controllers, adjustable temperature compensation for controlling color over temperature, as well as PWM and peak current control of each LED string.

Additional key specs include an accurate “white point”adjustment using proprietary temperature compensation scheme; control of single or two-stage power factor correction (PFC) AC/DC or DC/DC supply via efficiency optimizer; initial calibration at factory and storage of system defaults via integrated EEPROM; smooth start-up to avoid “red flash” and comprehensive fault management.

In terms of specific applications, the MSL2021/23/24 LED drivers can be used for general lighting, architectural lighting and mood lighting. Interested in learning more about Atmel’s extensive lighting portfolio? Be sure to check out our main lighting page here which offers a detailed look at various lighting technologies.

In-circuit emulation for AVR and ARM SAM D20 chips

You can do a firmware upgrade on your JTAGICE3 and it will work with the ARM M0+ based SAM D20. If you don’t want to use a separate emulator, there is also a debugger on the $39 SAM D20 Xplained Pro eval board. Atmel has a long history of providing inexpensive development tools. The $49 “Butterfly” eval board and $200 STK200 in-circuit emulator (ICE) was what got me to switch to Atmel micros back in 2000. These days we have three in-circuit emulators, sometimes called debuggers. The $49 Dragon is low cost and does all AVR chips, even the 32-bit AVR chips. The AVR ONE! is much more expensive, about 500 bucks, but it does have trace. That means you can go back and see where your program went as it executed. This can be worth every penny if you have complicated program flows with internal and external interrupts.

Most engineers like the JTAGICE3 emulator Atmel offers for only $99. Like the JTAGICE2, that predates it, the JTAGICE Mark3 can do all the AVR chips, including the newest XMEGA families. The great news is that Studio 6, the integrated development environment (IDE) program Atmel gives away for free, can do a firmware upgrade on your JTAGICE3 so it can work with the new SAM D20 ARM chip Atmel just released.  From the news bulletin:

Atmel Studio 6.1 SP2 includes a firmware update for the JTAGICE3 which adds programming and debugging support for the SAM D20 devices. The JTAGICE3 firmware will be automatically updated when a programming or debugging session is started in Atmel Studio 6.1 SP2.

Atmel Studio 6 users who want to take advantage of this firmware update will have to upgrade to Atmel Studio 6.1 SP2, which will be available for download at http://www.atmel.com/tools/atmelstudio.aspx starting August 15th.

Technical details can be found at http://www.atmel.no/webdoc/jtagice3/jtagice3.whats_new.html.

This is just too cool. Studio 6 has always supported code development of Atmel’s ARM MCU (microcontroller) chips, the ones with internal flash. Now you can debug the M0+ ARM-based SAM D20 with the same JTAGICE3 you use for AVR and AVR-32 chips.

I have to laugh when my buddies say Atmel tries to make money on our eval boards and emulators. We don’t look to make any appreciable profit on the tools. We give away Studio 6 for crying out loud, and anyone that has done product design knows what a cheap deal the eval boards and these emulators are. Atmel sells chips and touchscreens (XSense). That is where we make our money. So you folks that have bought a JTAGICE3, celebrate, you can now debug our great SAM D20 with it. Like I said, “Friends don’t let friends go without a debugger.”

A closer look at Atmel’s tinyAVR

Atmel’s stalwart tinyAVR lineup has been in the news lately, powering a wide range of projects including the DUO tiny mini computer, Agent smart watch, ShuttAVR mod for cameras, Game of the Goose, pressure sensitive floor, Nixie clock, digital dice kit, driving seven-segment LED displays and playing chiptunes.

As illustrated by the diverse examples above, Atmel’s tinyAVR devices are optimized for applications requiring a combination of performance, power efficiency and ease of use in a small package. Indeed, all tinyAVR devices are based on the same architecture and compatible with other AVR devices, with the smallest tinyAVR measuring only 1.5mm x 1.4mm.

“Integrated ADC, EEPROM memory and brown out detector let you build applications without adding external components, while offering flash memory and on-chip debug for fast, secure, cost-effective in-circuit upgrades that significantly cuts time to market,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces.

“Simply put, the tinyAVR offers a unique combination of miniaturization, processing power, analog performance and system-level integration. That is why the tinyAVR is the most compact device in the AVR family – and the only device capable of operating at just 0.7V.”

To be sure, where most microcontrollers require 1.8V or more to operate, the tinyAVR with boost regulator bolsters the voltage from a single AA or AAA battery into a stable 3V supply to power the entire application.

“In terms of high integration, each pin boasts multiple uses as I/O, ADC and PWM. Even the reset pin can be reconfigured as an I/O pin. tinyAVR also features a Universal Serial Interface (USI) which can be used as SPI, UART or TWI,” the engineering rep continued.

“Plus, Atmel’s royalty free QTouch Library makes it simple to embed capacitive-touch button, slider and wheel functionality into general-purpose Atmel AVR microcontroller applications. The library offers several  files for each device, supporting different numbers of touch channels – facilitating both flexibility and efficiency in touch applications.”

Last, but certainly not least, tinyAVR designs can be coupled with Atmel’s CryptoAuthentication devices for an added level of security. Interested in learning more? Be sure to check out our detailed tinyAVR breakdown here.

Kenneth Finnegan on the AVR Dragon eval board

I met a great engineer at the eFlea electronic flea market here in Silicon Valley. Kenneth already had an ME degree. Now he wants to get an MSEE with an emphasis in networking embedded systems. He is at Cal Poly. So he asked me if I could get him an AVR Dragon, a debugger board Atmel sells. A debugger is a gizmo that lets you see “inside” a chip. You can read its internal registers and see memory values. It makes it way easy to troubleshoot what is going wrong with your program. The Dragon works with most AVR microcontrollers. I got him a deal through our University program and asked if he would write a review when he got the board. He did a great job, and posted it on his website, with the understanding I would just cut-and-paste it to Bits and Pieces.

One of my good friends at Atmel, Paul Rako, recently sent me a sample of the AVR Dragon (Atmel store page), which is a in-circuit serial programmer (ISP) and On-Chip Debugger (OCD). The ISP functionality is familiar to most hobbyists in the AVR embedded programming scene; through the standard 2×3 pin header, you can erase the flash memory on an AVR and download new program code onto the chip. A typical example of an ISP programmer, and what I’ve been using exclusively up until now, is the wonderful, if sometimes a bit flaky, AdaFruit USBtinyISP.

As you look back through my blog, you can probably tell that only having ISP capabilities will get you pretty far, but where the Dragon really shines is in its ability to perform on-chip debugging. Most of the third-party programmers only implement the basic SPI-based erase-and-burn cycle you use when programming an AVR, but OCD allows you to set break-points in your program on the actual chip, and then step through your program code, read variable values, etc. All those glorious interactive debugging features that computer programmers have been spoiled with for decades. This makes embedded development MUCH easier, and an ability I’ve been suffering without while my projects have grown progressively more sophisticated.

 When I first opened the shipment from Atmel, I was very happy to see a piece of dev kit finally come in a reasonably sized, and attractive, box. I’ll actually be able to store this thing in its box instead of having to shuck it and store the PCB floating around in gallon ziplocks like most of my other dev kits.

 Look at that minimally wasted space! ESD foam on top and bottom, so over all, I’m happy with the packaging, which is surprisingly important when you literally have an entire closet dedicated to development kits collected over the years.

 Nice touch on the backside silk screen logo. I’d like to have seen the pin-out references on the top, particularly since they’re oriented for “top view,” but it’s still a handier reference than the printout I have floating around in one of my electronics binders.

Looking at the headers from the top of the board:

• The first row has 3x Vcc and 3x GND, which seems a little strange for a programmer, but might be handy for some projects?
• The second row has your 10 pin JTAG and 6 pin ISP headers, which are your two work-horse programming interfaces for AVRs big and small, and finally an unpopulated high voltage programming interface. The HV_PROG interface allows you to burn AVRs like old-school EEPROMs, and allows you to get around having to use the SPI ISP bus for programming. This is most useful when you want to use the reset pin as an IO pin (did you ever wonder why Atmel bothers assigning an IO port number to the reset pin?).
• And below the three programming interfaces… six rows of unpopulated, unlabeled, headers? Uhhh…

So the bottom third of the board’s real estate dedicated to empty headers threw me for a loop until I noticed the sentence in the description, “A development area lets designers build their own circuitry or add sockets for the desired device footprint.”

Fair enough; I can load the bottom of my Dragon with a socket and make it an AVR target board. I’ll just pull up the manual and figure out what the on-PCB pinout looks like…

Uhhh…

So apparently, Atmel didn’t feel the need to put the Dragon’s users manual on its product page? After finally resorting to searching through Google, I managed to find the users manual in Atmel’s online help system, which quickly lead me to what I was looking for. I’m not entirely impressed with the rats-nest of jumper wires they have in the tutorial, and the three pairs of Vcc/GND make a lot more sense now, but I’m not convinced I’ll not just stick to my standard practice of building separate target boards for each AVR model I use and keeping them in a ziplock in my drawer. I’d have expected a target area like that to use a bilateral switch array to allow for automatic retargetting to a specific AVR model, but that’s asking a bit much of a $50 dev tool.

So overall, I’m happy with the packaging and feature set, but am a little disappointed that they made the board 50% larger for what seems like a half-thought-out target area. I look forward to being able to use a less kludgy programmer than the USBtinyISP, and finally being able to set break points in my code. As Paul says, “friends don’t let friends go without on-chip debugging.”

Hey, I told Kenneth to give an honest review, and I am not going to edit out his criticism. And as you folks realize, it’s not like “Atmel didn’t feel the need” to put the docs in the product page. My buddy Gil over in the next cube just told me we have over 2000 English-language product pages. And those come in four languages. So I showed our web team the blog, and they point out it is not that simple. See the doc Kenneth found was a help page for the Atmel Software Framework (ASF). So it should not go in the documentation tab, since it is not technically product documentation. But Michael in the web team feels Kenneth’s pain. So he is adding that link Kenneth found to the product page description, which will keep the CMS (content management systems) happy. Like I joke “the other guy’s job is always easy.” That is the nice thing about coming to work here, where you can see how hard everybody is working to make the website do what you folks want it to. Kudos to the whole team—they really “get it”.

Now, the really cool thing is that we cleaned out a storage room and I found a Dragon I can play with too. As I mess with it, I will keep you posted on my trials and tribulations. Bear in mind my Atmel programming has all been in assembly language, so this might be exciting if I have to learn C.

Although I joke about “Friends don’t let friends go without a debugger,” it’s also true that “simple is good”. Kenneth was the guy I asked what was so cool about Arduino. He said: “Two big buttons. Compile, and Program, and that is all.” So if you can debug with printf statements out the serial port, go right ahead. When you want a real debugger we have the Dragon, and our Xplained boards not only have a debugger built in, but some of them have a header, so that after you get your board laid out and built, you can connect the header on the Xplained board to your target hardware, and it will be a debugger for the AVR in your production board too. Nice.

A closer look at Atmel’s SAM4N Xplained Pro Eval Kit

Earlier this summer, Atmel expanded its ARM Cortex-M4 Flash lineup with the entry-point SAM4N series. The new microcontrollers (MCUs) – which feature a 100MHz operating frequency – boast up to 1MB of Flash memory, multiple serial communication peripherals and analog capability.

The SAM4N is built around a low power sipping design, achieving real-world consumption levels down to 170µA/MHz in active mode; down to 20µA in sleep mode with full RAM retention & wake-up time down to 10µs; and down to 1µA in backup mode with the RTC running.

Key hardware specs include fast serial communication with 7 UARTs, four SPIs and three I2Cs; 12-bit ADC, 10-bit DAC, integrated voltage reference, multiple timers and PWM. On the software side, there is full IDE support for Atmel Studio 6, IAR and Keil.

Atmel also offers a SAM4N Xplained Pro Eval Kit, a hardware platform that allows engineers to more easily evaluate the Atmel ATSAM4N16C microcontroller. Supported by the Atmel Studio integrated development platform, the kit provides easy access to various Atmel SAM4N features, explaining how to integrate the device in a customer design. Like other Atmel Xplained Pro evaluation kits, the SAM4N Xplained Pro is capable of significantly expanding its original functionality by linking to additional Xplained Pro extension kits.

Aside from the ATSAM4N16 microcontroller, key specs include:

• One reset button
• One yellow user LED
• One user pushbutton (wake-up, bootloader entry or general purpose)
• 32.768kHz crystal
• 12MHz crystal
• 3 Xplained Pro extension headers
• 3 SPARE signal connector
• Embedded debugger
• Auto-ID for board identification in Atmel Studio 6.1
• One yellow status LED
• One green board power LED
• Symbolic debug of complex data types including scope information
• Programming
• Data Gateway Interface: USART, TWI and 4 GPIOs
• Virtual COM port (CDC)
• USB powered
• Supported with application examples in Atmel Software Framework

Atmel’s SAM4N Xplained Pro Evaluation Kit can be purchased here.

Process instruments packing Atmel tech

Process instruments employ a variety of sensors and methods to precisely measure process variables, such as temperature, pressure, level and flow.

Clearly, power consumption in active mode is critical for these products, as most field instruments are powered via a 4-20mA current loop interface, which significantly limits power budgets. In addition, process instruments should be capable of operating in hazardous areas.

Atmel’s versatile portfolio of microcontrollers (MCUs) can be used by manufacturers and engineers to design a wide range of industrial process instruments. Perhaps most importantly, our 32-bit microcontrollers are capable of operating down to 1.62V and achieving sub 1mW/DMIPS power consumption figures. In addition, process instruments often operate the microcontroller at low frequencies to reduce power consumption, which is why Atmel optimizes Flash read accesses for such scenarios.

“Both the Atmel AVR 32-bit microcontroller and the Atmel ARM Cortex-M3 processor-based SAM3 family provide modern and efficient RISC architectures, supporting more complex signals. Atmel’s Embedded DSP functionalities (MAC, saturating arithmetic) and FPU, along with middleware libraries to support them, considerably simplify signal conditioning,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces.

“Plus, complex signal algorithms, field bus or industrial Ethernet support, functional safety test routines, and multi-language menus, require increasingly large embedded Flash support. And that is why we offer 32-bit microcontrollers with embedded Flash up to 512KB. Atmel MCUs also integrate dedicated hardware mechanisms to support the implementation of the IEC61508 safety standard.”

In terms of wireless communications, Atmel’s wireless microcontroller lineup provides the required hardware for engineers to build products compatible with the popular Wireless HART protocol. Meanwhile, Atmel’s best-in-class RF properties help increase range and make RF links more robust, yet highly efficient.

“In short, Atmel’s SAM3, SAM7 and the AVR UC3 32-bit families deliver a unique combination of low power and excellent signal processing capabilities, as well as low power consumption, efficient signal processing (DSP and FPU), wide Flash size availability, sensor element and field bus connection, capacitive touch and wireless microcontrollers,” the engineering rep added.

Interested in learning more about Atmel’s process instruments portfolio? Be sure to check out our extensive device breakdown here.